Dance on the Wind tb-1

by Terry C. Johnston

  Nevertheless, they did leave behind one man in abandoning their Bighorn post in 1811.

  “Onliest trapper we left up thar’ was one of the mulatto fellers,” Isaac related.

  Bass turned from his anvil, beads of sweat standing out on his brow like glittering diamonds, his thick brown eyebrows soaked. “A Negra?”

  “He t’weren’t as dark as most Negras I see’d afore. Name o’ Edward Rose—the one we left behind when we put the Bighorn post at our backs.”

  Bass drove the hammer down on the glowing spring metal, spacing his words between each resounding ring of hammer on steel. “Why’d he … stay on … up there … seeing how … things were … mighty hot … in that country?”

  “Wanted to live on with them Crow.”

  The hammer came to a stop, and he stuffed the half-finished spring back into the coals, heaving down on the bellows handle to excite the fire. “Gone off to live with Injuns … just like a Injun?”

  Washburn nodded. “Them Crow have mighty handsome wimmens, Titus.” He licked his lips visibly. “Mighty, mighty handsome wimmens.”

  “What become of you when Manuel Lisa pulled out of that country?” Bass inquired, leaning over the red cedar piggin and bringing the ladle to his lips, drinking long and slow.

  “I stayed on with Henry. He been my friend right from that first winter in that up-country. I throwed in with him whar’ he was going.”

  With their desertion of the upper Missouri, Andrew Henry initially dropped downriver with Manuel Lisa. But while the Spaniard established a new base of operations at a new Fort Lisa raised near Council Bluffs, Andrew Henry figured he’d had himself enough of the Indian trade. He tromped on back home, while Lisa carried on a lively trade up the river as far as the Mandan villages, eastward to the Sac and Fox, from time to time bartering with bands of the westward-migrating Sioux. But due to the well-financed encroachments of the British companies coupled with the economic hardships brought the infant nation by the War of 1812, after more than a dozen years on the upper rivers, the American fur trade was no bigger when hostilities ended with the English, no stronger among the tribes in 1815 than the trade had been in 1804.

  By 1819 the aggressive Lisa had nudged out many of his stodgy, conservative partners, the sort of financiers he’d believed were holding him back—replacing them with men the likes of Joshua Pilcher.

  “I went with Henry when he walked away from Lisa,” Washburn explained. “Henry had him a plan, an’ a good’un too. We went up to the lead mines, up north.”

  “Galena?”

  “That’s them.”

  “You was mining lead?”

  “Same as ye buy for yer rifle, Titus. Bar lead—from St. Louis Tower. Yessir. Me an’ Andrew, ’long with some others, all throwed in the muscles of their backs too. It were good, honest work—not like the Injun trade. But no matter, Henry said: thar’ll always be fellers like Leeza to push open the doors to the frontier, fellers to keep them god-damned doors open.”

  The country Manuel Lisa wanted most to exploit was as close to virgin territory as any that then existed. The Canadians hadn’t trapped it to any degree at all. What few furs had come from that country were nothing more than those the Blackfoot stole from other tribes and turned around to sell to the Canadian companies. A rich harvest, Lisa kept evangelizing among his men and financiers, an unbelievable treasure of furs lay waiting those who would take the gamble. That territory was, after all, a land where an American’s scalp wasn’t worth much at all, attached to a head, or hanging from some warrior’s belt.

  “Then Leeza died that very y’ar,” Washburn explained. “Eighteen-nineteen. An’ Joshua Pilcher takes over the comp’ny. Carried on all the ol’ Spanyard’s dreams too. Took him two winters to do it, but Pilcher finally got him a big outfit put together, setting off for the upper river.”

  Some dozen miles above the mouth of the Knife River, Joshua Pilcher rebuilt an old Lisa post and named the new fort after one of his three lieutenants, William Henry Vanderburgh. Then Pilcher pushed ahead with the two others: Robert Jones and Michael Immel. Later that year at the mouth of the Bighorn, near the spot where Lisa had raised a post in 1807, Pilcher’s men built Fort Benton, christened for Missouri’s newly elected senator.

  By 1822 Pilcher had three hundred men trading on the upper Missouri and Yellowstone, Jones and Immel in charge of day-to-day operations. So with the Yellowstone trade secure, Pilcher next set his eye on the rich headwaters of the Missouri.

  “But by that y’ar I was done with breaking my back in a galena mine.”

  “What become of you?” Titus asked, drawing the crimson spring from the coals.

  “That once-a-time army gen’ral named Ashley come to see Andrew up to the mines—come to talk him back into the fur business. Said he needed Henry to be his field captain for a new fur company he was puttin’ together. Ashley claimed he was going back to that fur kentry—said he was headed for the land o’ the beaver on the upper Missouri!”

  Washburn grinned endearingly, his upper lip pulling back, taut above that snaggletooth like a hawser rope looped halfway around a wharfside post. “Spring of twenty-two it were: the two of ’em hired on some fellers what answered the notice they put in the St. Louie paper—askin’ for fellers to go to the mountains an’ trap beaver.”

  “I don’t remember ever seeing that notice,” Bass said quietly, slamming the hammer down onto the spring iron angrily. Watching the fireflies spew forth, the slake fly off the steel band with every blow. “Don’t read much no more anyways. Ain’t read much of anything in a long, long time, you know.”

  “My, but thar’ was a bunch of ’em what did sign on for the upriver,” Isaac replied, his eyes squeezed into squints as he brooded on the roll call of their names, likely recalling each face too. “That Negra Rose was back from the Crows by then, ready an’ snortin’ to trap again. He went, along with a greenhorn Negra named Beck with. Then thar’ was the preacher, Jedediah Smith—he carried him his Bible ’long in his possibles. Young Jim Bridger t’weren’t more’n a green-broke kid, an’ Davy Jackson couldn’t been much older. ’Nother Span-yard, Louie Vasquez, was along too, with Tom Fitzpatrick, an’ a ornery ol’ hunter said he lived with the Pawnee of a time.”

  “That one you told me ’bout—Glass?”

  “Yep.” Washburn nodded. “Our bunch with Henry was the first to push off from St. Louie. The gen’ral an’ his boys weren’t gonna get away for the better part of a month behin’t us. Whew! My ol’ body gets tired yest thinking about what work it be pushin’ a boat upriver. Mean work—’bout as mean as work comes: pullin’ that boat of Henry’s with ropes up through the brush and bramble, fightin’ skeeters an’ mud, warpin’ them boats around trees to pull with all the gut we got—”

  With a wag of his head Titus suddenly interrupted, “If I don’t see another flat or keel and them big hawsers for the rest of my life—it’ll be soon enough.” He drew his bare, sinewy forearm across his forehead, then swiped at the large pendant of sweat hanging at the end of his nose.

  Struggling upriver, the Henry brigade pushed past the town of Franklin, Missouri, and nearby Boone’s Lick. Next came Fort Osage at the mouth of the Kansas River, and finally the mouth of the Platte.

  “That’s the place I’d leave the Missouri an’ strike out for the moun-tanes on my own the next time.”

  Bass slowly laid his hammer down on the cooling steel and swallowed before asking, “The river you said what takes you into the mountains?”

  “Runs smack into the heart of the Rockies.”

  “So you did see where it goes?”

  “Not rightly—but I been on it. Ye can count plew on that.”

  “Plew?”

  “Frenchie word for beaver pelt.”

  “You say you already was on that river—the Platte we can take to the mountains?”

  “That comes later on, Titus,” he replied gruffly, waving off that interruption to the flow of his story. “By an’ by we pull Ashley’s
trade goods, ’long with our own possibles an’ plunder, all the way north to them Mandan villages. It were thar’ we bartered fer ponies. Ye see, the gen’ral was to rendezvous with us by then—but word reached us that his boat hit a snag and sunk clean to the bottom of the river. Not a feller to give up, Ashley turned right around to head back to St. Louie fer more trade goods. Meanin’ Henry’s brigade, we was on our own. Andrew looked over our bunch an’ said he’d lead out the rest of us overland—makin’ for the Yallerstone.”

  “Where you an’ Rose been before.”

  “Yessir—we two knew some about that kentry. First night out Henry set up his run of guards—but, damn! If the Assiniboin didn’t come in an’ hit us a few nights later. Skedaddled off with more’n thirty of our ponies. That put Henry in a real blue funk, so bad that t’weren’t long afore he decided agin tryin’ to make it all the way to Three Forks that season.”

  “Can’t see why Henry’d wanna go back there anyways,” Bass said as he mopped his face there beside the glowing forge.

  “Arter we was the ones went an’ jabbed a stick in that Blackfoot wasps’ nest more’n ten y’ar afore?” Washburn asked, then chuckled. “’Thout all the ponies we needed so we could make a faster march of it upriver, Henry said we’d go no farther’n the mouth of the Yallerstone, wait till spring to tramp on over.”

  About a mile above the confluence of the two rivers, Andrew Henry’s men built themselves crude log shelters chinked with riverbank mud and began laying in wood to get them through the coming season, more hints of an early and cold winter becoming apparent every day.

  “’Bout the time the leaves was really turnin’,” Isaac continued, “word come upriver that Missouri Fur was coming our way. Had plans of their own to raise up a post at the Three Forks afore winter set in hard. That’s when Henry changed his mind—figured to take him some men on up the Missouri. Thought it might not be a better place for us to winter in, a wee bit closer to the Forks come green-up.”

  “The rest of Henry’s men stayed on at the Yellowstone?”

  Washburn shook his head. “Henry sent ’em off too, south by west torst the high moun-tanes we could see off a ways.”

  The Missouri Fur Company didn’t get as far as the Three Forks country that autumn, settling instead for erecting their post at the mouth of the Bighorn River on the Yellowstone. Henry himself didn’t get all that close to the Forks either. By the time the first hard snow had squeezed down on the high plains, he and his men were scampering to get their four log shelters built, all of them enclosed by a crude stockade, there at the mouth of the Musselshell beside the Missouri River. Which placed his base about the same distance from the fabled beaver country of the Three Forks as was the Missouri Fur brigade wintering in at the mouth of the Bighorn.

  “Now that his post was up an’ the snow was flying,” Isaac explained, “Henry was dead set on sendin’ out parties to explore that kentry torst the Forks.”

  “They ever get over to that Blackfeet country that winter?”

  “Close to it, Titus,” he answered. “An’ for Henry’s troubles, the men found more beaver’n any man thort possible. Ever’ man’s spirits was higher’n those clouds along them stony peaks above us—every last man jack of us makin’ plans to get rich come spring trappin’, thar’ was so much prime plew to pull outta the streams in that kentry.”

  Washburn nodded as if savoring that memory, swilling back some water from Titus’s piggin before wiping off his chin whiskers with the back of a buckskin-covered arm. “When that winter broke, them fellers Henry sent off skedaddled back from Crow kentry. Fitzpatrick, Clyman, an’ that Bible-toter, Jed Smith. Them an’ the rest’d moseyed far south of Crow land, an’ come back to tell of a pass they said would take a man right on over the moun-tanes.

  “The wonder of it, Titus,” Isaac exclaimed. “They tol’t us it was so easy a man don’t know he’s crossed over the moun-tanes till he sees all the water flowing off to the west. A pure marvel, that pass!”

  When spring came, so did the Blackfoot.

  “April, it were, when they fust showed their devil faces,” Washburn continued. “By May, four of Henry’s twenty was kill’t—running off some of them ponies we still had. I watched it all damn near take all the starch right out of Henry’s backbone, it did. The man swore he was through with Blackfoot kentry, prime beaver or no. ‘Missouri Fur can have it,’ he vowed. ‘Lock, the stock, an’ the barrel too!’”

  Andrew Henry retreated downriver a ways, with the intent of waiting for Ashley’s main group bringing up more supplies and horses.

  “Henry wasn’t able to do damn much ’thout those horses,” Washburn said as he stuffed his cheek full of tobacco he tore loose from a dark brown carrot of the cured leaf, then stuffed back in the pouch at his hip. “Henry said the gen’ral was headed our way with them horses, plunder, an’ ’nother batch of likely young’uns wantin’ to make their fortune in the moun-tanes. So he sent Jed Smith down on the best pony we had us, with word for Ashley to hurry on up. It was weeks later afore we saw Jed again—but he t’weren’t leading the gen’ral our way. No, sir. The preacher come back in a lather, bellering that by the time he got to the river an’ run onto Ashley, the gen’ral run hisself into a mess of trouble at them goddamned Ree villages.”

  “Them’s the Injuns you hate just as bad as the Blackfoots,” Titus observed.

  “Damn right. One evenin’ it seems Ashley stopped his new keelboat at them villages to trade for horses so he could carry his trade goods an’ supplies overland to Henry. Most all the men with him was sleeping on the riverbank, wrapped up tight in their blankets, when them Rees started firing on ’em at the peep o’ day! Must’ve been some fight, Titus.”

  Even though they were heavily outnumbered, Ashley’s men held on the best they could, pinned down on that sandy beach below the bluffs where the Arikara villages stood, giving the warriors a wide field of fire. The general ordered his French keelboat crew to raise anchor and pole their way closer to shore to pick up his men—but for the longest time the boatmen refused. At last Ashley and some Americans steered the keelboat toward the men left on the bank. By the time the retreat was made, fourteen of the general’s men lay dead at the edge of the Missouri. Another ten were seriously wounded. Ashley cut the anchor rope and allowed the keelboat to float downriver, far beyond the villages and fear of a second attack.

  “As soon as Jed Smith told us how the gen’ral been chewed up by them Rees, Henry an’ the rest of us come down on the double. A long march that was. We skirted round the village an’ found Ashley’s boys camped on the west bank of the river, lickin’ their wounds. They buried the dead an’ sat thar’ waitin’ fer the chance to get in some knocks. Forted up, they was, with some other traders what were headed upriver behind them. Them an’ a hull mess of Colonel Leavenworth’s regulars—more’n two hunnert of ’em come to punish the Rees an’ get the fur traders past the villages.”

  But though the white soldier chief now possessed numerical superiority over the Arikara, he still did not press his advantage.

  “Arter shootin’ up Ashley’s bunch so bad, them Rees got off scot-free!” Washburn grumped. “Goddamned army, anyways! All it done is show them Rees our backsides an’ make ’em wanna thumb their noses at the white man.”

  “That bunch of soldiers didn’t go off and attack the village?”

  “Hell, no! An’ that show of yaller was bound to make them red niggers harder to deal with come the next time we run into one t’other. So whar’ we laid to way below the villages, on down to Fort Kioway—what some folks on the river call Fort Lookout—Henry and Ashley had themselves a real rip-snorting confab, arguing on what best be done ’bout their trapping business. All that money, all them supplies lost in that fust boat sunk to the bottom of the river, then all them trappers kill’t with Henry an’ down at the Ree villages too—with nothin’ yet to show for it!”

  “Had to be a pretty sad time of it for all of you,” Bass said as he stabbed the
spring into cold water with a steamy hiss.

  “Well, now—it truly were some sad doin’s. But the two of ’em finally decided Henry should point his nose for the Yallerstone once’t again. Summer was almost gone by then. Already August—so Henry tol’t us—when we pulled away from Ashley’s bunch again.”

  “Headed back to the up-country to trap beaver?”

  “That’s the true of it, Titus,” Isaac replied. “Johnson Gardner, Black Harris, Milt Sublette, Hugh Glass, Jim Bridger, some eight or so more of us. A small party, most every man still afoot, using what horses we had to pack the goods we took off Ashley’s boat, the one the gen’ral called The Rocky Mountain. We pulled away from Kioway, making for the Yallerstone—three hunnert fifty miles off on the skyline, counting on doing our best to make it in ten, maybeso twelve days at most.”

  Henry planned to push back up along the Missouri River to that country just south of the Arikara villages, from there to strike out overland to reach the Grand.

  “Damn, but we wasn’t gone far when the Mandans jumped us.”

  “Mandans? Thought they was friends to the white man!”

  “Not right then, Titus. That far upriver they’d heard tell of what the Rees got away with—how the yellow-backed army let them bastards off. So even them Mandans was willing to jump white men now that them Rees gone scot-free for what they done to Ashley’s outfit. Damn, but that sours my milk!”

  “Them Mandans skip off with what you had left for horses?”

  “Shit! Them Mandans didn’t have much the stomach to make a real fight of it—so we run them warriors off pretty quick, arter givin’ ’em a good thrashin’. Ye see, Henry was bound that the word go out: don’t none of them tribes dare poke a stick in his hive or they’d get stung. An’ stung bad.”